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Pornography, No More Favored By Spammers

The State of Spam Report by Symantec for February 2007 pointed adult, or pornographic spam has continued to descend, reaching a new low level of 3% of all spam. On contrary, in the first six months of 2006, pornographic spam accounted for 22% of total spam.

Spam originators wanted better gains from their endeavors, and due to this, many have turn their backs to the alluring approaches of pornographic spam.

The methods of relaying image spam is undergoing evolution, as cyber-crooks and anti-spam attempts scuffle hard to drive it through filters or halt it in filters' tracks. Symantec says spammers who use image as bait "have taken a new angle" on attacks.

Angle adverts to the slanted text included in their messages. This is an effort to associate many techniques together to make image spam skimming void that might catch such junk and trash them.

Health and products spam, such as those promoting fake drugs, each accounted for 24% of the total spam in January 2007. Financial spam (such as pump-and-dump investment) represented another 21%.

Hair-loss solutions and Viagra have been the 'big' health-related spam creators. Product-related spams generally involve common goods and services, like clothing, make-up, and devices.

North America, South America, Australia/Oceania, Europe, Africa, and Asia and were identified as places of spam origin.

One spam that has made its presence felt on international scale is casino spam. The report highlighted French, German, and Italian spams in circulation that are likely to try and find other gamblers as US legislation has made almost impossible for gamesters from America to visit online casinos.

Another latest report puts forth that if the renewed boom in spam continues on its present track, 90% of all electronic mails by 2006-end would be spam. A surge in spam originating from South Korea and China lead to a 30% hike in spam volume in January 2007, says Marshal's Threat Research and Content Engineering Team based in Australia. It says that spam level reached its highest crest ever, jumping 280% since October 2006.

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